18.04 Bucket and chuck it wasn’t getting me very far, even after I’d dropped the water using the pump. It took a retired school ma’am to suggest the pick. Several random stabs later and overnight the pond is empty but for a thick gooey residue of mud – which will go very well on the vegetable plots later. I’ve no idea where all the bricks came from…
23.04 The last of the old pond wall is now in a heap at the bottom of the garden, and I’m in a heap at the top. Beer is helping… During this period, I decided to take a monthly picture of the back garden, as a kind of record as to where the stuff is all planted. Chaos reigns here, and next winter we won’t have a clue what’s about to come up. Evidence may help. This, then, is April…
03.05 And then we found the gas pipe… Now, the day before they installed it in 2001 I took a picture of the trench we’d had dug for it, but they’d clearly decided not to use that. More to the point they’d laid the pipe less than 120mm below the surface. There’s no standard depth for gas pipes, but HSG47 suggests a minimum of 375mm. Hey ho. I found it with a deliberately gentle pick axe, and happily I picked behind it and didn’t damage it. It does mean the design of the pond has to “adapt” to the prevailing conditions.
15.05 Back from holidaying in Dubrovnik and on with the work… The surface area should be about what I planned for originally, but theres now a wide diagonal shelf for marginal planting (under which is the yellow fellow). It’s not as deep as I was hoping for, and I’ve located where they dumped the rubble when they built the house… So I’ll be raising the edge a little, so that there’s a foot of water above the surface. I’ll probably use a rubber/EPDM liner now, instead of the glass fibre I was considering pre-gasline.
I can tell you it’s easier reading this waffle than it is digging the pond…
Rosher.Net 
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